Texas Rep. Ted Poe urging top honor for last World War I veteran (updated)

A Texas congressman who worked with the last surviving World War I veteran to try to create a national memorial to “The Great War” is calling for Army veteran Frank Buckles to lie in repose in the Capitol Rotunda &#151 a setting usually reserved to honor former presidents.

Honoring Buckles at the Capitol “is our chance to say thank you to the last of a generation,” says Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, who served in the Air Force Reserves in the 1970s. “It is the final legacy of those who fought ‘over there.'”

AP photo

Frank Buckles joined Army in World War I

Buckles’ daughter, Susannah Buckles Flanagan, also has requested the additional honor for her late father who died in February at the age of 110.

“If the last American soldier surviving is not suitable to serve as a symbol around which we can rally to honor those who served their country in the Great War, then who can serve that purpose? There is no one left,” says Flanagan, who took care of her father at his farm in West Virginia.

Controversy has erupted over final honors for Buckles, a resident of Charles Town, West Virginia.

A date has not yet been set for the veteran’s funeral, says Rep. Shelly Moore Capito, R-West Virginia, whose district includes Buckles’ home.

The lawmaker said she is hoping for action by next week on pending House and Senate resolutions that would allow Buckles to lie in honor in the Capitol.

“We just want to make sure that we do it right,” says Capitol. “I think it’s a very appropriate way to not honor him as an individual, but really as the ending of an era.”

But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has balked at extending such an honor to the former Army corporal. The congressional leadership wants the Pentagon to have Buckles’ funeral at Arlington National Cemetery’s majestic amphitheater.

“It is unconscionable that Speaker Boehner would deny this honor to the last living American veteran of World War I,” says Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia. “I urge Speaker Boehner to reconsider this ill-advised decision.”

“Frank Buckles is the last one &#151 the last American Doughboy,” Poe said. “Corporal Frank Buckles of the United States Army should have a full military burial at Arlington Cemetery and lie in honor in the United States Capitol. As we come to the end of this chapter in history and the bugles sound Taps for the lone survivor, I hope that we do the honorable thing.”

Buckles joined Poe on the National Mall in 2008 to help highlight Poe’s proposed legislation to expand the local WWI Memorial for the soldiers from the District of Columbia into a national monument similar to other monuments to World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

The bill called for authorities to refurbish and expand the District of Columbia memorial to honor the 4.7 million Americans who served in the armed forces during World War I.

The D.C. memorial, a marble bandstand resembling a Greek Temple, was dedicated by President Hoover in 1931 to honor 499 Washington, D.C., residents who died in the conflict and 26,000 Washington residents who served in the war.

Poe’s proposal called for a 12-member commission appointed by the president to raise money to expand the existing World War I memorial to honor all American veterans of World War I.

Poe’s “Frank Buckles World War I Memorial Act” never became law.

Buckles, born in Missouri on Feb. 1, 1901, lied about his age to join the Army at the age of 16. He served in England, France and in Allied-occupied Germany, where he helped escort German prisoners of war back home to Germany after the Armistice on Nov. 11, 1918.

Buckles recalled never getting closer than 30 miles to the legendary Western Front.

The United States lost a total 116,516 troops in the conflict, including more than 63,114 killed away from the front. Another 204,002 soldiers were wounded.

Buckles returned home from France to become a merchant seaman and was later captured in the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II. He survived more than three years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp before allied troops rescued him.